


Reunion

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: F/M, Getting Back Together, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 08:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18824968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Colleen and Danny, getting back together.





	Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> For an anon on Tumblr who asked for a Danny/Colleen reunion. <3

She has imagined it a thousand times. 

In the beginning it goes something like this:

There's a dungeon, the classic kind of dungeon with damp stone walls and flickering torches. Danny, stripped half naked, is chained to the wall (and Ward is probably around there somewhere, chained beside him most likely, _not_ half naked because she draws the line at that). She strides in, katana in front of her, and effortlessly dispatches two guards while Danny looks hopelessly delighted to see her.

"Oh hello there," she says casually, wiping her katana on the back of a random goon and then sheathing it. "Fancy meeting you boys here."

(Or some other tossed-off quip. The exact levels of action-hero-quippy to bitter to frantically throwing herself on Danny and kissing the stuffing out of him depends on the kind of day she's had and the way her texting with Danny has gone lately. "Miss me?" she fantasizes about saying casually, or "Wow, I bet you wish you'd taken me with you _now,_ huh?")

This is probably her favorite scenario, but she rotates through a dozen others. Sometimes Danny is burning with fever when she pushes open the ill-fitting door of a rural house and kneels to take his hand gently in hers. Sometimes he's walking on a bridge or a riverbank, through a market or a mall, and a Hand assassin steps up behind him, and then Colleen steps out of the crowd and cuts them down and Danny turns around, and she sees his shock change to gratitude and relief and joy.

("Do you miss him?" Misty asks, and Colleen rolls her eyes and says, "Should I?")

But in time her fantasies warm and soften, as she lies with phone in hand on the bed that used to be theirs, paging through photos Danny's sent her, or typing texts in the echoing quiet of the dojo. She misses him, misses him desperately. There are no Hand goons or dungeons or last-minute rescues playing in her mental movie theater now, at least not as often anymore. There's just Danny, turning in surprised delight when she steps out of a crowd on a streetcorner and touches his shoulder. Just Danny, slipping his hand into hers, taking her in his arms. Just Danny, lying beside her, as if she could almost reach out and touch him.

A hundred times, she almost buys a ticket to wherever the hell he and Ward have gotten themselves off to this time. And every time, she doesn't, because she feels so, so ... she doesn't even know; all she knows is that they got tangled up somehow, and he left, and she wants him back like a missing piece of herself, but she is also afraid that if she runs after him now, she'll be setting herself up for a lifetime of running after him.

Her life, most of it, is here. She really loves it. She has a home where she feels safe, filled with objects that are beautiful to her; she has a neighborhood she likes, and a workplace she feels good about, and a circle of friends she likes and even in some cases loves, and a city she works hard to help and protect and save.

... and a hole in her heart, and a kinda-sorta boyfriend halfway around the world, and she doesn't know how to reconcile those two things. Misty says she should either get over herself and go overseas to find Danny, or start dating again, but neither of those choices feels right.

She just knows that she misses him, and if he was ever really in trouble he couldn't get out of, she'd be there in a heartbeat. But in the meantime, there's the phone, and quiet late-night conversations in which he tells her he misses her, and she tells him (finally) that she misses him, and they talk about everything and nothing, and the other side of the world feels farther away than ever before. 

She tells him about her fantasy of rescuing him from a dungeon, and he laughs. "If Ward and I get thrown in a dungeon, you'll be my first choice for getting us out, Colleen." There's a voice saying something in the background, and Danny adds, "Ward says he wouldn't be surprised."

" _I'm_ surprised it hasn't happened already."

He asked her once before, a long time ago, to come with him. She finds that she's not willing to come if he doesn't ask her again, and he doesn't. But at the same time, she asks herself if she's making a mistake, holding onto pride and throwing away something she could have had for the sake of protecting her heart.

They both need time, she tells herself. Broken things can heal. It just takes time.

And then there's a knock on her door.

 

*

 

It's an afternoon at the dojo when she doesn't have to go in to work at the center, so she's taking some time for herself. She was reading a book earlier; now she's doing katas and centering herself and getting ready for a night out patrolling the neighborhood. She's not expecting anyone. She picks up her katana and then puts it down; no need to scare little kids selling magazine subscriptions, or whoever it is.

She opens the door and there's Danny, with a stupidly enormous bouquet of flowers.

Colleen just stares at him. She's imagined this a thousand times, and only now she realizes that never once did she imagine him coming _here._

He smiles at her a little bit shyly, and that's when she finds out that his shy, sweet smile still makes her stomach drop the same way it always has. His hair has grown out a bit, enough to curl wildly the way it did when she first met him, and he's wearing a dark T-shirt and carrying a giant bundle of daisies and other brilliantly happy-looking flowers that obscures most of his torso.

"Hi," he says.

This is where head!Colleen would have a quippy retort. Instead she just says "Hi," and grins back at him, feeling a fizzing of happiness starting somewhere in her chest.

... which of course is when Ward appears behind him and says, "So, is she home or not? Because the meter's running and I'd like to get back to -- oh. Hi, Colleen."

Ward typically doesn't enter into any of her Danny-reunion fantasies except perhaps as background dungeon fodder or the person who calls her when Danny is languishing of fever in the rainforest (and then conveniently vanishes thereafter). Now she finds herself looking at him with extreme annoyance but also with curiosity that she's never really felt for Ward before. He's tanned and wearing a leather jacket, and looks relaxed and happy in a way that she's pretty sure she's never seen on him, ever.

Danny, meanwhile, gives him a look of pure distilled exasperation. "I thought you were going to stay in the taxi, Ward."

"Give me a break. I'm jet-lagged as hell and I've been on a plane for fifteen hours." He gives Colleen a little wave. "And now I'm going back to the taxi, and the taxi and I are going back to my place, because it looks like things are well in hand here. Goodbye, Colleen. Danny, if you call me any sooner than three days from now, I'm hanging up on you."

"That's oddly specific!" Danny calls after him, "uh -- bye!" and then Ward's off down the stairs before Colleen can actually figure out what to say to him, and then Danny and Colleen are just standing there, looking at each other.

"So hey," Danny says, "do you want --" and he shoves the flowers at her.

"Oh, um. Thanks." She takes them and looks at them and then drops them on the floor and pounces on him.

He's wiry, solid, and thinner than he used to be, and so very _there_ in her arms, solid and present, not a voice on the phone or a half-out-of-focus selfie texted from some random location in Cambodia or Tibet, and she just wants to rub her entire body all over him like a cat.

When they come up for air, with the smell of trampled petals hanging heavy around them, Danny says, "So, does this mean you don't like the flowers, or --"

"Daniel Rand," she says, "shut up and kiss me," and pulls him inside.

They start for the bedroom, but don't make it any farther than the couch.

 

*

 

Later, much later, lying in a tangle of shed clothing and dislodged couch cushions on the floor, she plays with his hair and asks him, "Why are you here?"

She's expecting an answer like: the Hand is back in New York, or some previous Iron Fist left a crate here back in 1929.

Instead, he brushes a strand of hair back from her forehead with infinite gentleness, and says quietly, "Because I was an idiot to leave, and you're worth coming back to."

She might have to argue about the idiot part later -- they both needed time, and he had places to go, and a life to live, like she did. But right now all she can think is that she hopes the center doesn't mind not getting her back for a few days, because she's not planning on leaving the dojo anytime soon, if ever.


End file.
